CBE - On our
origins (if you don't see a menu on the left, use
this link)

The
department of Crystallography
and Structural Biology (in Spanish, CBE, Cristalografía
y Biología Estructural)
came into
being with this current name in January 2010, when the Spanish National
Research Council (in
Spanish, CSIC, Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas)
gave approval for this new title choice.

However, the origins of this department (previously under
different names, although always directly connected to crystallography)
can be traced back to the early
1930's when the Board for Advanced Studies and Scientific Research (in
Spanish, JAE: Junta
de Ampliación
de Estudios;
see also this
link) inaugurated on the 6th February 1932 the so
called National
Institute of Physics and
Chemistry (nowadays the Institute of Physical
Chemistry "Rocasolano"), a beautiful building dedicated to
scientific
research and funded by the Rockefeller
Jr. Foundation. The aim of this new institute, where our department is
located,
inherited the principles of the JAE,
an independent teaching and research institution, created in 1907 and
aimed to help Spain’s to end its isolation and forge
links
with European science and culture. The "Rocasolano" library offers an
excellent documentary collection about the history of this institute.

The
former National Institute of Physics and Chemistry (Instituto Nacional
de Física y Química, Madrid) inaugurated
in February 1932. Its
nickname, “The Rockefeller” derives from
the fact that
it was built using funds ($420.000) from the Rockefeller Junior
Foundation. Click on the image to see a movie and several images taken
during the 1930s.

“The
Rockefeller”, today. As Institute of Physical
Chemistry “Rocasolano”, is one of the more relevant
research Institutes of the CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council.
Click on the image to visit the Institute web site.

Blas Cabrera–who
later became director of our Institute, the Instituto
Nacional de Física y Química– wrote a report in 1915 on the novel
application of X-rays to determine the structure of materials in the
same Spanish journalAnales
de la Sociedad Española de Física y
Química. (published in
four communications: part I,
part II,
part III,
part IV). And by 1926, the journal Anales
de la Sociedad Española de Física y
Química (Proceedings of the Spanish Royal Society of
Chemistry and Physics) published
the first research article in Spain directly related to crystal
structure determination using X-ray crystallography:
"Determination of the crystal structure of nickel
oxide, cobalt and lead sulfide", signed by Felisa Martin Bravo
and performed under the direction of Julio Palacios.

Luis Rivoir, and
some other young researchers, worked with Julio Palacios(see
also this link) at
the Physics Research
Laboratories on structure determinations of
inorganic and organic crystals and on the perfection of the Fourier
methods of analysis. And at the same
time, not far away from our department, Gabriel
Martin Cardoso (at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias
Naturales in Madrid)
trained Julio Garrido,
who
later moved to the Palacios
group.

The definitive
push to
crystallographic studies by X-ray diffraction came through the work of Julio Palacios,
when he moved in 1932 to the "Rockefeller" institute,
recruiting the funds and equipment that he inherited from
the "Ramón
y Cajal" Chair and with young researchers whose scientific value
became apparent very soon, such
as Julio Garrido, Luis
Bru, Jorge
Doetsch, José
M. Rios, Armando
Durán,
J. Barasoain, J.
Losada, L.
Rubio, Piedad
de la Cierva, R.
Fernández,
O.
Foz, Feo, R.
Salvia,
and Luis Rivoir,
among others. With these resources,
the first doctoral thesis based on X-ray diffraction studies was born
in the "Rockefeller" (Determination of the Molecular
Structure of acetone, ethyl ether,
methyl ether and ethyl halocarbons by electron diffraction) signed by Luis
Bru and awarded with
the "Alonso Barba" prize of the Spanish
Royal Society of Chemistry and Physics. And this was followed by other
prestigious doctoral theses such as the one by Julio
Garrido, Piedad
de la Cierva
and J. Losada.

The impetus of all those
young crystallographers after the Spanish Civil
War (1936-1939) created the foundation of current Spanish
Crystallography, and among them, Luis
Rivoir
headed the very first X-ray Department at the "Rockefeller", at that
time
named Instituto de Fisica
“Alonso de Santa Cruz”,
belonging to the CSIC as founded in 1939.

By the year 1946, the staff
of the "X-ray
Section" was composed by Julio
Palacios, Manuel Abbad, Julio Garrido,
Luis Rivoir, Fernando Huerta and Jaime
Chacón, the last two as trainees, but it was
not until a year later when the Section started to detect increased
activity, and so Pilar
Smith, Demetrio Santana, Carmen Agudo, R. Menéndez, Luis
Blanco and
Florentino Gómez Ruimonte joined the Section.

It was also in 1948, during
which Julio
Palaciosmoved
for a long time to Lisbon, that the "X-ray
Section" was reorganized. Luis
Rivoir became head
of the group and as scientific
assistants M. Abbad
and J. Garrido.
Also in that year other young trainees joined the group, Severino
Garcia-Blanco, Alejo
Garrido, Virtudes
Gomis
and, as a drawing technician, Josefina
Marqueríe.In 1949 Sagrario
Martínez Carrera, Antonio
Rodríguez
Pedrazuela,
Isidoro Asensio and José
Martínez Ors
joined the Section and coinciding with the beginning of the new decade,
there was a strategic approach of some actions that could be considered
as a prelude to the laboratory automation, naturally in the context of
those years. Therefore, to shorten the time spent for thousands of
numerical
operations required for the calculation of Patterson or electron
density maps, the huge work of preparing the so-called
"Beever-Lipson strips were undertaken. At the same time, the stay of a
figure so prominently in the specialty as Martin
J. Buerger,
with his minimum function, gave a strong impetus to the methodology for
the
interpretation of Patterson maps. Also in 1949, the CSIC
founded the Spanish National Crystallographic Committee which joined
the
International Union of Crystallography created just two years before,
in 1947.In 1950, the Spanish
Association of Crystallography (in Spanish, ACE, Asociación Cristalográfica Española)
was founded with 35 members, including, among others, Luis
Rivoir and Manuel
Abad
forming
part of the first Board of Governors. Many important
crystallographers were invited to the "Rockefeller" during
those years, including Taylor, Laval, Lipson, Jeffrey, Wyckoff,
Hägg, Buerger, Zädonov, Fornaseri, MacGillavry,
Strunz,
Henry…The decade of the 1950's
started with new doctoral theses, and new
trainees joined the Section, Julián
López de
Lerma, José
Alonso López, Elena Carrillo Garcia and Aurea
Perales
Alcón,
among others, and some international events were organized in
Madrid on
behalf of the IUCr. Some young researchers of the Section went away for
long stays in laboratories of strategic importance. So, Severino
Garcia-Blanco
moved to the MIT in Massachusetts, and the intrepid young Sagrario
Martínez-Carrera
joined the University of Amsterdam, for both to learn
techniques for imaging search, and the three-dimensional methodology
for structural resolution.

During the
1960's students knew that Crystallography in Spain
was centered around two main schools, one in Barcelona (University of
Barcelona) and the other in Madrid around both Sagrario
Martínez-Carrera and Severino García-Blanco
at the "Rockefeller".

The 1960's
lead to a further restructuring of
the group and the former "X-ray Section" was renamed as "Crystal
Structure", with two laboratories led by S.
Garcia-Blanco and L.
Rivoir, respectively, and incorporated new young people (Pedro
Salvador, Jose Fayos Alcañiz, Cayetano Martínez
Pérez, Feliciana Florencio
Sabaté, Félix
Hernández Cano, Francisco Sanz Ruiz, Celia
Lupiani, Concepción Foces and
Martín Martínez-Ripoll, and as
assistant Maria
Auxiliadora Valle,
who was later replaced by Isabel
Izquierdo).
And finally new administrative changes carried out also during those
years, modified the status of the crystallographers at the
"Rockefeller" (at that time officially named Institute of Physical
Chemistry "Rocasolano"), and the old "X-ray Section" gained the status
of Department (as the "X-ray Department").

But it was the tireless Sagrario
Martínez-Carrera,
who in 1962 prepared her luggage again, this time towards the
University of Pittsburg in the United States to work under Prof.
Jeffrey with the
main goal of improving their learning to address problems on the
emerging
"electronic computing" that
replaced the Beevers-Lipson strips and the early calculation machines. After her return
from Pittsburgh and thanks to her broad background in
programming in Fortran and in Autocode, she
prepared a series of computer programs, which were humorously called "steps forward" by
the young Cayetano
Martinez,
since they were mandatory for the
early stages of processing the diffraction data. With all that, the
noisy machine IBM 7070, just installed at the CSIC, was
unexpectedly
overloaded by the work that came continuously from the "Rockefeller",
accummulating cabinets and pillars of punched cards.

Left:X-ray
tubes
and Weissenberg cameras used in "The Rockefeller" during the
1950s and early 1960s.

Right:
PW1100, the first automated 4-circle
diffractometer installed in Spain (1973). Severino
García-Blanco is explaining Julio Rodríguez
Martínez, the Minister of Education and Science (the one in
the middle), the benefits of the automated four-circle diffractometry
vs. the photographic methods.

The
1970’s brought the first automated
four-circle single-crystal diffractometer which slowly replaced the
older Weissenberg and precession cameras.
And this
decade came
with new incorporations, Angel
Vegas, Enrique
Gutiérrez-Puebla, Ángeles Monge Bravo,
Isabel Fonseca
and María
del Carmen Apreda
(with her indestructible Argentine accent). From all corners
appeared an avalanche of requests for collaborations, since
Spanish chemists had discovered the importance of the molecular
structure!

It was really a success, and a greater joy at the Department, when Julio Rodriguez,
a committed Minister of Education and Science, gave some extraordinary
funds for the acquisition and installation of the
first automated four-circle diffractometer (a PW1100).
Some colleagues from
other departments called it "la churrera" (something that makes things
very
fast and easy!). Somehow they were right because it allowed us to do in
a week what previously required three months of work using the
Weissenberg cameras and the photometers (that is, the diffraction
experiment and measurement of the diffracted intensities). However it
had no sense to explain to our
collegues that "la churrera" unfortunately could not solve the phase
problem!.

New doctoral theses were produced and many articles were published in
international journals (many of them in Acta Crystallographica), and
some of us (F.H. Cano,
J. Fayos
and M. Martinez-Ripoll)
went away during the 1970's for longer stays in other labs in the
United Kingdom, United
States and Germany,
respectively, to learn the most relevant crystallographic advantages
that later were
incorporated to the department.

Félix
Hernández Cano learned
in Manchester the famous "X-Ray System" as well as M.
Martínez-Ripoll
who also importedthe
know-how with the main-frame computers from
his long stay in Germany.
All this accumulated knowledge produced some
considerable discomfort for the managers and technicians of the huge Data Processing Centre (based on a Univac
1108) of the Ministry of Education and Science, where we went every day
with a lot
of calculations, making use of dozens
of magnetic tapes as well as the famous "Fastrand" (a magnetic disk
with cylindrical shape, huge in size, but not in capacity, and rotating
at
the dizzying speed of 15 revolutions per second!). Glorious
era in which the
department organized a fantastic library of
crystallographic computer programs covering absolutely all stages of a
structural resolution and which could be accessed from all Spanish
universities.

And so we reached the 1980's, and the people of the department grew not
only in experience, but also in age... We got the funds to
buy a computer, the so-called "Rocky", a complete
computer system of the VAX-11/750 series with a
"monstrous" 250 MB disk on which, in addition to the operating system,
we had to allocate the entire crystallographic computing
system in addition to the diffraction data for each user. With "Rocky",
with 5 additional workstations located in various institutes of the
CSIC, we
set up the very first scientific calculation network of the institution
and
whose effectiveness was beyond any doubt.

The people working at the Department of
Crystallography inn 1983.
For names click on the image!

Additionally, during many years, since 1986, an effort
was made by our department to give support to all remaining Spanish
crystallographers, by collecting data, creating and maintaining the
first crystallographic software collections in Spain (installed in a
UNIVAC mainframe of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science), and
making an extra effort to reach an agreement with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC)
and the CSIC for a free-of-charge
distribution of the CSD crystallographic database for all academic
institutions around the whole country. This agreement, thanks to the
generosity of the CCDC,
later covered all Latin American countries and was running until 2012.

During those
years, we also learned how to automate a prototype of a four-circle
goniometer (including all end-user program packages), which
subsequently sold the factory Rich.Seifert u.Co. (Germany). It included
not only all the best features we had previously discovered in both,
the Nonius-CAD4 and the PW1100 diffractometers, but also it contained
many new improvements and functions, being able even to recognize and
separate twins . It was really a nice and interesting job!

CRYSOM,
the single-crystal four-circle diffractometer
fully programmed by us in MS-DOS Fortran for the former company Rich.
Seifert & Co. (Ahrensburg, Germany)

Sagrario
Martinez-Carrera showing a pendant simulating her beloved
imidazole molecule. Imidazole was the first molecule whose
structure was solved by Sagrario for the
first time at low temperature, in 1966. F.H. Cano is sitting
on her left side.

At the beginning of the 1990's some of us (see below) decided
to make a big jump
into the field of protein crystallography... It was not an easy job,
but even starting
with a small equipment (see below, right), we did it! And this time
also with the biggest effort made by the youngest researchers
of the department (mainly Julia
Sanz, Armando
Albert and Juan
Hermoso) during their scientific stays abroad (UK and
France).

Since those years the department became one of the
most important places in Spain to learn crystallography and for working
in
macromolecular crystallography. We invite you to see who we are today,
what we do, and what we offer, through the menu items you see
on the
left of this web page (if you do not see such menu on the left, please,
use
this link).